by Bill Maher
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
PHOTO CREDITS
blue rider press
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Copyright © 2011 by Bill Maher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. Published simultaneously in Canada
Pages 351–54 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
ISBN : 978-1-101-55215-5
Some portions of this material have appeared in slightly different form on HBO’s Real Time,
in the Los Angeles Times, and on Salon.com and The Huffington Post.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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To Jasmine
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Before we get to the fun stuff, I want to acknowledge and thank the people who make a project like this possible, fun, and painless.
David Rosenthal, the publisher of this tome. In 1993, I was on television for ten seconds when I asked this editor at Random House if that was credential enough to get my novel published. He saw a real book there, and I maintain to this day that True Story is a real book. I will forever be his fan for being my fan, and it’s a pleasure to repay his faith all these years later with this cash cow.
Everyone at Penguin Books who has the savvy in actually assembling a book and marketing it, and, you know, grammar and stuff.
The Real Time writers who wrote so many of the jokes in this book: Chris Kelly, Brian Jacobsmeyer, Jay Jaroch, Matt Gunn, Adam Felber, and Danny Vermont. To do a once-a-week weekly wrap-up show like Real Time right, I need to come in to the office every day—though I wouldn’t strictly need to have a writers’ meeting every day. But why would I ever miss the most reliably fun and enlightening part of my day?
My invaluable team of producers, Sheila Griffiths, Scott Carter, and Dean Johnsen. Not only do they make the trains run on time, but they are such decent human beings it provides the essential counterbalance to the snarky host.
My script coordinator and keeper of records and dead bodies, Joaquin Torres, for the vital job of helping me to pull together, order, and edit the material for this book, all while somehow reading my handwriting. And sometimes my mind.
Real Time coproducer Matt Wood, for his outstanding work accessing, assembling, and sometimes creating the images for this book. My old job.
My longtime manager, Marc Gurvitz, and agent, Steve Lafferty, who had to do almost no work to sell this no-brainer of a cake project, but who have . . . oh, all right, at other times proven themselves useful.
My publicists, CeCe Yorke and Sarah Fuller, and everyone else at True Public Relations who does such a great job covering up all my scandals so as not to overshadow when I have something to sell.
From the executive suites of HBO, Nancy Geller—my Saint Peter, the rock upon which I built my church all those years ago (you know, metaphorically speaking)—and Richard Plepler and Mike Lombardo, who provide the real estate, and the nurturing of it, without which New Rules would just be a YouTube clip of a podcast of a tweet.
The fans! Duh . . . the people for whom I have such a special love because in a country that’s gone as batshit crazy as this one, it is some comfort to know there are people who think in a similar fashion. By the way, anyone who comes up to me and says, “I watch you every night,” you’re not a real fan, because I’m not on every night!
And last but not least, Billy Martin is the Real Time head writer and the man who thought up the New Rules concept, and try as I might, I can’t seem to cut him out of these books. Just as well, since he’s the one who gits ’er done, with his usual creativity and ruthless efficiency.
FOREWORD
New Rule: People who read a book’s foreword are anal. Especially this book’s foreword. It’s a joke book. What am I supposed to say? “Enjoy”? “Don’t spill your Mr Pibb”? “Careful not to get a paper cut”? If you need a pep talk or some insight from me before diving in, maybe you’re not ready for word books. Maybe you should stick to the kind of books that have pictures you can color.
Okay, I’m sorry. It’s more than just a joke book, and I’m glad you took a moment to check in with me before proceeding. What you’re holding is a collection of hundreds of my favorite New Rules and essays, some performed on the show and many others never before seen on TV—not because they suck, but for a variety of reasons, like: (a) it’s a particularly filthy, dirty, potty-mouthed rule about fetish porn or edible panties or rhinoceros scrotums, and that week there was someone on our panel who would be appalled by it, like a congressman from a conservative district, or a clergyman. Or, you know, a woman.
Or (b) it might have been a terrific New Rule, but that week we had other good ones on the same subject. Although we have our share of viewers who are news junkies, I treat the show that we do live on Friday night as a catch-up show for those who might not have had the time during the week to see the news, because they work hard, have hobbies, or forgot to use birth control a couple of times in the ’90s. So I try to cover as many of the important subjects as possible, either in the monologue, with the guests, or in the New Rules, and so it’s survival of the fittest by topic.
Or (c) sometimes I read my writers’ New Rules submissions completely baked and just picked the wrong ones.
As for the essays—or what we call our “editorial”—which are the much longer final New Rules that conclude the show: I can’t lie, the
re are no new ones here; they were all done on the air. But, I must immodestly say, I think a lot of them bear repeating. They take three minutes to read on air, but I spend six or eight hours over the course of the week writing and editing them to get a show-ender that, I hope, both makes a unique point and does so in a funny way. It’s the part of the show I’m most proud of and that I don’t think you can see anywhere else on television. So please don’t read this part of the book on the toilet or you’ll break my heart.
And please know I’m not one of these celebrities who puts out a book every year or so to try and cash in on my fans’ love and loyalty. That’s what my line of meat marinades is for. And my Real Time, Real Smooth scented personal lubricant, now available at Walgreens.
I realize some celebrity books are like gnats or Anthony Weiner’s penis, relentlessly coming at you and constantly in your face. My books are more like cicadas. They come out in longer intervals, Christians consider them a plague, and there’s always at least one kid in the neighborhood who will eat one on a dare.
I try to make each book special. My last one was published in 2005, and the one before that in 2002. I think most men experience this: The older you get, the more time it takes you between releases.
So welcome to The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass, the second installment in my New Rules trilogy. I’m glad you picked it up, and I think you’ll find it quite enlightening, especially chapter 7, where I describe in detail how Levi Johnston plied me with watermelon wine coolers and took my virginity in a tent. The sad part: Part of me still loves him.
Now, about the subtitle, A Funny Look at How Everybody but Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass. Truth is, I didn’t even want to have a subtitle, but the publisher said these days in the book world it was de rigueur, like using a French phrase somewhere in the first ten pages to show you’re a real “writer.” The first New Rules book carried the subtitle Polite Musings from a Timid Observer, which cracked me up, but when promoting the book, I can count on my penis the number of times a morning deejay got the joke. You see, Fartface and Asshole Jack, I’m not really a timid observer, and my musings are known to be somewhat less than . . . oh, never mind.
So I took a more literal approach this time: “Everybody but me has their head up their ass”—I think we all feel that way sometimes! And that’s why New Rules resonate with so many. They call out our fellow humans, providing that tug on the leash that urges them back to civil behavior. New Rules put a voice to life’s gripes, everything from the petty annoyance of that little sticker on your supermarket plum to the brazen injustice of a Supreme Court that sides almost solely with corporations over individuals. Plus, it’s the segment on my show when the panelists have to shut up and I get to talk.
As we approach the presidential election of 2012, it seems we need New Rules now more than ever. They’re an attempt, albeit through humor, to bring at least some semblance of order to a world gone haywire. Do you realize we are currently overlooking the threat of climate change, which is more likely to be the end of us than anything else, while actively passing legislation to protect us from Sharia law? That’s like ignoring the crackhead jimmying open your back door to confront the monster your toddler hears under her bed. Sure, you’ve assuaged a little girl’s unfounded fear, but now you’ve got Tom Sizemore in your kitchen.
That’s what this book is more than anything else: a pleasant, funny diversion, something to make you laugh while the earth slowly fries and suffocates in drought, wildfires, and eventual flooding that will engulf us all. I’m sorry, I meant it’s fantastic beach reading and a terrific stocking stuffer.
While our politicians place personal power before patriotism, my New Rules are a call to consensus. They provide much-needed structure in an ever-changing world. And why not? We all live by rules, whether codified or implied. We adopt them through common sense (on the airplane, we’ll exit row by row), common courtesy (at the gas station, we pull up to the far pump, so someone can pull in behind us), or experience (when sharing a cell, the bigger man gets his choice of bunks).
And then there are those rules we must simply learn for ourselves. For instance, when you’re out shopping, you have to actually buy something. You can’t just browse around endlessly, sniffing the merchandise and saying, “Mmm, I’m in heaven.” Believe me, I’ve tried this, and eventually they ask you to leave the dispensary.
Finally, a word about time. I’m against it. Especially now that it seems to pass more quickly than ever. The world of 2005, when the first New Rules came out, seems as distant as Michele Bachmann’s gaze when she talks about lightbulbs. We now have the iPad, Braille porn, cars that park themselves, and a new badass president who shoots pirates and terrorists in the face. Plus, the AMC network no longer shows just old movies. In paging through my previous New Rules book—and you really should pick it up; you wouldn’t go see Twilight: Eclipse without having seen Twilight: New Moon, would you?—I couldn’t help laughing at some of the new fads or conventions I poked fun at then, which are completely mainstream now. I railed on, for example, about the weirdos who walk around talking into those strange Bluetooth devices, and, of course, now Bluetooths come factory-installed on infants.
So enjoy these New New Rules now, while they’re fresh. Because I find the world is changing much more quickly than I can bitch about it.
A
A CASE OF THE MUNDANES
New Rule: If you tweet neat stuff about your life for your friends to read more than ten times a day, I can tell you a neat fact about your friends: They hate you.
A FRIDGE TOO FAR
New Rule: The Internet doesn’t have to be everywhere. Samsung has a new Internet-equipped refrigerator, just the thing for people tired of sending e-mail from their toaster. It’s so convenient: Instead of writing an old-timey “analog” grocery list on paper, you simply command your iPod to talk to your refrigerator, which relays the request to your computer, and in six to ten working days a carton of milk will arrive from an Amazon .com warehouse facility in Nebraska, encased in six layers of Bubble Wrap. What could be easier?
AB FIVE FREDDY
New Rule: Stop posing with your shirt off on the cover of your hip-hop album. This look doesn’t say gangsta. It says, “I’ll suck your dick for some blow.”
ACAPULCO SCOLD
New Rule: This one is for Mexican drug lords: If you don’t knock off this violence right now, I’m going to stop smoking pot entirely. Just kidding. I’ll get it from Thailand.
ACCOUNTS DECEIVABLE
New Rule: My bank must stop trying to sell me identity theft protection. You know why I expect you to protect my money? Because you’re a bank. Besides, I’ve already taken the most important precaution to make sure nobody abuses my credit card: I’m single.
EVOLUTIONARY WAR
New Rule: You don’t have to teach both sides of a debate if one side is a load of crap. President Bush recently suggested that public schools should teach “intelligent design” alongside the theory of evolution, because after all, evolution is “just a theory.” Then the president renewed his vow to “drive the terrorists straight over the edge of the earth.”
Here’s what I don’t get: President Bush is a brilliant scientist. He’s the man who proved you could mix two parts booze with one part cocaine and still fly a jet fighter. And yet he just can’t seem to accept that we descended from apes. It seems pathetic to be so insecure about your biological superiority to a group of feces-flinging, rouge-buttocked monkeys that you have to make up fairy tales like “We came from Adam and Eve,” and then cover stories for Adam and Eve, like intelligent design! Yeah, leaving the earth in the hands of two naked teenagers, that’s a real intelligent design.
I’m sorry, folks, but it may very well be that life is just a series of random events, and that there is no master plan—but enough about Iraq.
There aren’t necessarily two sides to every issue. If there were, the Republicans would have an oppositi
on party. And an opposition party would point out that even though there’s a debate in schools and government about this, there is no debate among scientists. Evolution is supported by the entire scientific community. Intelligent design is supported by guys on line to see The Dukes of Hazzard.
And the reason there is no real debate is that intelligent design isn’t real science. It’s the equivalent of saying that the Thermos keeps hot things hot and cold things cold because it’s a god. It’s so willfully ignorant you might as well worship the U.S. mail. “It came again! Praise Jesus!”
Stupidity isn’t a form of knowing things. Thunder is high-pressure air meeting low-pressure air—it’s not God bowling. “Babies come from storks” is not a competing school of thought in medical school.
We shouldn’t teach both. The media shouldn’t equate both. If Thomas Jefferson knew we were blurring the line this much between Church and State, he would turn over in his slave.
As for me, I believe in evolution and intelligent design. I think God designed us in his image, but I also think God is a monkey.
—August 19, 2005
ACID REDUX
New Rule: Stop saying drug use makes people lazy. Jimi Hendrix did a lot of drugs, and even though he’s been dead for forty years, he’s still making new records. Suck on that, Partnership for a Drug-Free America! In fact, Jimi’s new CD debuted at number four on the charts. Which tells me (a) his music is as relevant as ever . . . and (b) that baby boomers still haven’t figured out how to steal music off the Internet.